Yes many of the units of the southwest presently do have fair to good habitat. That is because the deer harvests on those areas have been pretty high for about the past twenty years, and the time the deer numbers started to increase.

If is for that reason the habitat there is still pretty good. If you back off of the deer harvests you will see the habitat decline and then you will also so the deer numbers decline even more then they are now. That is the part you people just can’t seem to grasp. If you want to have high deer numbers you have to protect the habitat instead of the deer. As long as you have the habitat you can have the deer even though their numbers will fluctuate up and down to some degree. If you protect the deer instead of the habitat then the deer will damage the habitat and then the deer numbers will decline to where the can’t possibly increase unless the habitat improves first. Some of those areas in that southwestern corner are showing some rather significant signs of over browsing during the past decade too. Those areas certainly aren’t exempt from having too many deer, declining habitat and naturally declining deer populations that then follow declining habitat. You also have to remember that every new house, yard, highway, shopping mall, etc. take away a chunk of habitat that once fed some deer. You can ’t just keep crowding more deer into less habitat forever, you have to keep fewer deer every time you lose a piece of what was once deer habitat.

As for you comment concerning the report cards and 60% of the hunters not reporting about all I can say if that it seems you don’t have any idea how that works either. That number isn’t a number picked out of the air or guessed at. That reporting rate comes from Game Commission personnel touching between 30 and 40 thousand deer each year, recording information from them and then waiting to see what percentage of those hunters that we know killed a deer, because we touched it, send in a report card. You can believe what ever you want but denying the statistical logic of the reporting rate is nothing more then being in a state of denial and choosing to have your head in the sand.

Before antler restrictions it was estimated that hunters killed about 80% of all antlered deer so yes it is likely about 20% did survive the fall seasons. In some areas, especially around the more metropolitan areas and the major highways, it was also estimated that about 20% of those that made it through the season were the victim of other forms of mortality before the next fall. That simply didn’t leave enough bucks in the fall population to get the does bred during the correct time periods.

R.S. Bodenhorn